HiJackThis Fork Analyzes Windows PC for Unusual or Suspicious Items

Many years ago, HiJackThis used to be the number one tool for the security analysts to find out the changes made in a Windows PC by malware. Then its development was aborted and people switched to newer and better tools to analyze a possible malware infection in Windows. But now the project has been forked on Github and the new HiJackThis Fork has sharpened its tools for better detection of the unusual or suspicious items or settings in a Windows PC.

You can use HiJackThis for scanning your system for any suspicious changes made in the Windows operating system caused by malware and other potentially unwanted software. It also gives you options to remove these changes or revert them back to their default state. For example, it can revert the Windows hosts file back to its default state if it finds some unusual entries inside this file.

As you launch HiJackThis Fork in your Windows PC, it shows you two options to “Do a system scan only” and to “Do a system scan & save the log file”. in either case, it will go through the known locations in your Windows operating system to find the unusual and modified settings.

After the scanning is finished, you will be presented with a big list of all the settings detected on your Windows system. You can choose the ones that you want to fix. The fixing is done by removing these entries or changing their modified values back to the factory default values. For example, it can reset the homepage of Microsoft Internet Explorer back to the default value, it can reset the proxy settings for Windows, it can change the contents of the Windows hosts file back to the original set, and more.

The main purpose of the HiJackThis Fork, just like the original HiJackThis, is to consult an expert or technician online regarding your Windows PC problems. For this, you can save the log file and send it over to the experts for analysis. They will then advise you according to their findings. HiJackThis Fork has a lengthy online help section regarding this topic.

HiJackThis Fork puts new life in the old project and made it useful once again. You can find it of great use especially if you work as a technical advisor or if you are an IT admin for your firm.